Parkland’s size has come in very handy at many points during the girls basketball season. The Trojans also have good enough team speed that they can play with most teams that prefer to run an up-tempo style.

But Parkland struggled against the aggressive, fast-paced style that Freedom showed them in the first round of the East Penn Conference playoffs. Ironically though, the turning point involved a strong outside game from a player coming off the bench, which sent Parkland to a 40-30 loss to Freedom, eliminating the Lady Trojans from the EPC playoffs.

With Parkland (14-9) holding a 13-11 lead with five minutes left in the second quarter, Yasmine Herrera hit a three-pointer to put Freedom ahead and Jennifer Kokolus then scored two of her game-high 25 points to make it 16-13. The big turn came when Herrera hit back-to-back three-pointers that seemingly took the wind out of Parkland’s sails, putting Freedom up 22-13 with 1:19 left in the second quarter. Parkland got a basket from Kassidy Stout in the final minute of the first half to make it a 22-15 game at halftime.

“We lost our composure after [the three-pointers],” said Parkland head coach Ed Ohlson. “I called a timeout right after that and told them that if we lose our composure, we’ll never get back in the game. Even though we did come unraveled a little, we did get back in the game and made a nice little run.”

Freedom (20-3) upped their lead to 10 points in the third quarter, but seniors Claire Courter and Stout put Parkland on a 6-0 run to cut the game to 25-21 late in the quarter. Kokolus again came through, this time with a buzzer-beater to make it 27-21 after three quarters.

The up-tempo style did appear to take its toll on Parkland and Kokolus was able to cut to the basket through the fourth quarter and spent much of her time at the foul line where she hit 11-of-14 on the night and eight-of-10 in the fourth quarter. Freedom hit 12-of-16 foul shots overall, while Parkland hit just six-of-15 free throws.

“Their speed bothered us a little bit, but they took advantage of what they have and took away our advantage, which is our height,” said Ohlson. “Kudos to them. That’s a well-coached team. Also, we missed a lot of foul shots and in games like this, you need to make those shots.”

Kaz Kennedy led Parkland with eight points, followed by Stout and Lindsay Berger, who each scored seven points in the game.

Freedom now moves on to play Bethlehem Catholic (19-4) in the EPC semifinals. The other semifinal matchup has Nazareth (19-4) and Northampton (20-3) playing for the right to move on to the EPC Championship game.

As for the Lady Trojans, their hopes of an EPC title are over, but they will return to play in the District 11 tournament, which begins on February 19. It’s unclear who Parkland would meet in their first game. Ohlson plans on using the time off y to get his team ready for what he hopes will be a deep run in districts.

“We’ll rest up a little bit and scrimmage a couple teams and get ready,” he said. “We did some things tonight that went back to our old ways, so we need to fix that. Overall though, we’re playing pretty well lately and even defensively tonight we played well. Offensively, we were a little too impatient and that was one of our things before the game was to just stay patient. They get after you and it gets tough, so we’ll work on that.”